Adherents.com: Religious Groups in Literature

34,420 citations from literature (mostly science fiction and fantasy) referring to real churches, religious groups, tribes, etc. [This database is for literary research only. It is not intended as a source of information about religion.]

Taoism, continued...

Kato, Ken. Yamato II: The Way of the Warrior, Part 2. New York: Warner Books (1992); pg. 12.

"An American psi-astrogator thinks in terms of bending all psi--of whatever kind--to his will, while the Tao mathenaut tries to discover a pure stream of good psi to drift in. "

Taoism

galaxy

2520

Bujold, Lois McMaster. The Vor Game. New York: Baen (1990); pg. 47.

"He seemed to be building up a helluva supply of yin, the balancing yang to come had better be stupendous. "

Taoism

galaxy

2891

Barnes, John. Sin of Origin. New York: Congdon & Weed (1988); pg. 1.

"Hauskyld: Randall 2891 A.D. There was no reason to suppose that he'd have any more luck with 'tmuvam' this time than any other... When the Randallans used it as a transitive verb, it mean something like 'love'; intransitively, it meant something like 'lives the Tao,' always assuming that his translation of 'zjirathk' as 'Tao' was right. "

'Just so. A report set in stone to record the rule of an enlightened leader. A leader who, from the account on the stone, exemplified the perfect leader, as described by Lao-Tzu. You may have noticed most of our towns are named for men of original ideas--Pirsig, Lao-tzu, Pythagoras...' ";

"Without birds like Tao, his linked mirador chaffinch, their job would be a great deal harder. "

Taoism

galaxy

5000

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Telling. New York: Harcourt (2000); pg. 102.

"...she defined the Akan system as a religion-philosophy of the type of Buddhism or Taoism, which she had learned about during her Terran education: what the Hainish, with their passion for lists and categories, called a religion of process... "

Taoism

galaxy

5290

Card, Orson Scott. Xenocide. New York: Tor (1991); pg. 103.

"So Jane watched Qing-jao's research... This sixteen-year-old daughter of Han Fei-tzu... was in the uppermost social and intellectual class on the Taoist Chinese world of Path... " [This refers to the planet Path, colonized by Chinese and governed by a religion that is essentially Chinese traditional religion, especially a combination of Confucianism, Taoism and ancestor worship. The characters and religious themes based on this planet permeate the book Xenocide, so most references to them will NOT be included to the Adherents.com database.]

Taoism

galaxy

13560

Herbert, Frank. Dune Messiah. New York: Ace (1987; c. 1969); pg. 217.

"Despite every shred of personal knowledge about the experience Alia was undergoing, he had been caught in the tao-web. "

"'I think the concept to which you are referring is what the ancients called 'yin and yang.' '

'Yes, more or less. Yin and yang. So, you see, I realized that to perfect the yin of Terminus, I had to locate its yang. Which I did, over there.' "

Taoism

Georgia, USA

2025

Cool, Tom. Infectress. New York: Baen (1997); pg. 171.

"'Who is that?'

'I don't know,' Scott said, shrugging. 'The name that can be named is not the eternal one.'

'What's that?'

'A line from the Tao Te Ching. You should read it.' "

Taoism

Greece: Crete

1997

Preuss, Paul. Secret Passages. New York: Tor (1997); pg. 179.

"'It's exactly what happened to David Bohm... The Zen of the Tao, or whatever. Wooly Dancing Masters. all that metaphysical New Age crap.' "

Taoism

Japan

2030

Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books (1984); pg. 11.

"The shuriken... were mounted against scarlet ultrasuede with nearly invisible loops of nylon fishline, their centers stamped with dragons or yinyang symbols. "

Taoism

Kentucky

2005

Barnes, John. Kaleidoscope Century. New York: Tor (1995); pg. 177.

"I spent another pointless year around Louisville Ruin, trying to be a cybertao prophet and get a Stochastic Jihad going. Lots of luck; it seemed to be difficult, within cybertao, to say much in favor of hurting people. " [Many other refs. to cybertao, not in DB.]

'As influenced by Taoism and local nature cults. It is a harmonious faith, without sects or heresies, pervading the civilization.'

'Everything can't be pure loving kindness,' Christian said.

'Certainly not. But the peace that the Emperor Wei Zhi-fu brought about has lasted for a century and will for another two..' "

Taoism

Roman Empire

500 C.E.

Garfinkle, Richard. Celestial Matters. New York: Tor (1996); pg. 47.

"He threw up his hands in melodramatic disgust. 'Would you rather we wasted our time with Platonist dithering on the nature of ideal forms while the Middle Kingdom conquered us with their impossible Taoist science?' "

Taoism

Roman Empire

500 C.E.

Garfinkle, Richard. Celestial Matters. New York: Tor (1996); pg. 102.

"'It was like magic,' Euripos said. 'The paint migrated across your body, twisting into new patterns. For the next two days he kept painting new lines and twisting the needles until yesterday the lines stopped moving and he said you were cured.

...I offered my doctor the standard Akademe excuse on the incomprehensibility of Taoist science, but the words sounded hollow, the vain protestations of someone railing against fate. 'Don't bother trying to understand it. Once the Middlers have been conquered we'll have all the time in the world to divine their secrets.' " [More. Many other refs. to Taoism in novel, not in DB.]

"Laura looked the [Church of Ishtar] pamphlets over. They were slickly printed. The margins were dotted with ankh symbols, yin-yangs, and chalices. "

Taoism

Tibet

500 C.E.

Garfinkle, Richard. Celestial Matters. New York: Tor (1996); pg. 138.

"Xan was not a sect I had ever heard of.

'It was founded about five hundred years ago by Buddhists and Taoists I the border states between India and the Middle Kingdom.'

'Taoists? What does Buddhism have to do with Middler science?'

'Mountain Taoists,' he said. 'They're philosophers, not scientists. The Middle Kingdom has as much use for them as the League does of Platonists. When I was home on vacation, I met a childhood friend whom I had not seen for years; I didn't know at the time that he had been in Tibet learning the eightfold path. I told him about my work and my worries, and he introduced me to a Xan teacher. Instead of beginning with Buddhism, he began with the Tao. He made me see the folly of Sunthief by showing me that we were breaking the balance of yin and yang.'

'I've seen those words in captures Taoist science texts. What do they mean?' "

"It was a trick his father had taught him. Place the stones in piles of six and the number left would be used as the bottom digit in the tetragram for reading the Tao Te Ching. Four stones were left after the first round, indicating a broken line of two segments. He grabbed three more handfuls, until he built a tetragram of two solid lines over a triple segment and the double segment. In the Tao ritual it meant Passage Eight.

The greatest good is like water. The value of water is that it nourishes without striving.

He spoke the words out loud, with his eyes closed.

It stays in places that others disdain and therefore is close to the way of life. " [Some other refs., not in DB. See also pg. 401.]

"'But I have studied the words of Lao Tzu,' the boy said, suddenly switching to fluent Mandarin... 'We live in a land of teachers,' he observed matter-of-factly. 'Passage Seventy-one,' he said, referring to the Tao Te Ching again. 'You know Seventy-one?'

'To know that you do not know is best,' Shan recited. 'To not know of knowing is a disease.' He considered the enigmatic boy. He spoke like a monk but was far too young. 'Have you tried Twenty-four? The way of life means continuing. Continuing means going far. Going far means returning.'

"Mr. Nobusuke Tagomi sat consulting the divine Fifth Book of Confucian wisdom, the Taoist oracle called for centuries the I Ching or Book of Changes. " [Many refs. to I Ching, most not in DB. Where I Ching is mentioned not in reference to a named religion (Confucianism or Taoism), it is listed in DB under 'Confucianism.']

"'My question regarding Mr. Baynes produced through the occult workings of the Tao the Hexagram Sheng, Forty-six. A good judgment. And lines Six at the beginning and Nine in the second place.' His question had been, Will I be able to deal with Mr. Baynes successfully? And the Nine in the second place had assured him that he would. It read:

If one is sincereIt furthers one to bring even a small offeringNo blame. "

"'He was so critical of everybody. I remember he told me about this party once where one of the guests was from China. He was very proud of the fact that he went up to her and corrected her pronunciation of Chinese. This based on his being in China a couple of years in World War Two. He couldn't even pronounce 'Taoism,' you know?' "

Taoism

USA

1998

Dick, Philip K. Time Out of Joint. New York: Random House (2002; c. 1959); pg. 49.

"The great mind, he thought, bends when it nears this kind of fellow creature. Meeting and mating of opposites. Yin and yang. The old Doctor Faust sees the peasant girl sweeping off the front walk, and there go his books, his knowledge, his philosophies. "

"Thomas Hardy used to call it the Immanent Will and in China it might have been called the Tao, but we late twentieth-century postmoderns would probably call it something soothingly pseudoscientific like the 'genetic imperative.' "

"My Journal: The Tao of Listing. Like Robinson Crusoe, I have a 'certain Stupidity of the Soul' and like him I have lists, not of provision, but of anchors in space and time... "

Taoism

world

500 C.E.

Garfinkle, Richard. Celestial Matters. New York: Tor (1996); pg. 138.

"'...the balance of yin and yang.'

'I've seen those words in captures Taoist science texts. What do they mean?'

'Yin and yang are seemingly opposed . . . forces is the best word for them, though that's far from accurate. The important thing is that their opposition is an illusion. In fact they work together. When they are in balance, the Tao, that is, the way, is followed. When the Tao is not followed, destruction comes for everyone. Sunthief is part of that destruction.' " [Many more refs. about Taoism, not in DB. See also .]

Taoism

world

500 C.E.

Garfinkle, Richard. Celestial Matters. New York: Tor (1996); pg. 212.

"'What does the Tao have to do with this?' I asked. 'The Middler science texts all talk about it as some sort of progression of natural actions. How can a natural course relate to the success or failure of a rebellion?'

'The scientific definition is too narrow,' he said. 'Tao means 'the Way,' the natural process of all things. My sect joined the philosophy of the Tao to that of the Buddha.'

'So you understand the meaning of the Tao?'

'A little, and not all the way the Taoist technologists do; my teachers were philosophers, not scientists. They could no more explain the working of a Xi lance than Plato could understand...'

'Philosophers?'

'Yes,' Ramonojon said. 'Taoist philosophy did not vanish the way Platonism did. When the first 'An emperor drafted the practical Taoists to make weapons, the real Taoists fled into the mountains of Tibet to hide. After the 'rebellion' they encountered some Buddhists who were also hiding, and Xan was born.' "

Taoism

world

500 C.E.

Garfinkle, Richard. Celestial Matters. New York: Tor (1996); pg. 243.

Pg. 243: "The Taoist scientist dangled the gleamingly metal wires over the side of the ship...

'What are you doing?' I asked.

'Charting the Xi flows around this planet,' he said. 'I've never seen heavenly patterns this complex.'

I had never watched a Taoist working before, and I found myself fascinated by what he was doing. My thoughts began to fixate on the question of what was causing the wood grain to change. ";

Pg. 248: "The Nipponian looked at the old Taoist scientist... ";

Pg. 265: "Ramonojon closed his eyes and began to speak in the Kanton dialect. I could tell he was quoting but I did not know the source. 'Heaven endures,' he said. 'Earth survives. The reason Heaven and Earth can endure and survive is that they do not live for themselves. Therefore they can endure forever.' '

He opened his eyes. 'Lao-tzu, the Canon of Way and Virtue.' " [Many other refs., including refs. to specifics of Taoist philosophy and science. See also pg. 249, 266, etc.]

Taoism

world

1570 C.E.

Anderson, Poul. The Boat of a Million Years. New York: Tor (1989); pg. 166.

"...rite of a heathendom that the Tao and the Buddha had barely touched. "

Pg. 194: "The Illuminati associate this with Iris, and also with other goddesses from Isis to Ishtar and from Kwannon to Kali--with the Female Principle, yin, in general. "; Pg. 205: "...taught by all the mystics of the East and West--Buddhists, Taoists, Vedantists, Rosicrucians, etc. "

"In my final year [of Law School] I became interested in the literature of religion--or, to be more precise, the literature of mysticism... Purely as an intellectual diversion I began to read St. John of the Cross, George Fox, the Vedas, Tao, Zen, the Kabbala, the Sufis. "

"Humanitas, yes, that's what we need, isn't it, Higher with his Renaissance, and Aldus Manutius there, need a few more particle men who've read the Tao Te Ching, couple more manager who've studied Sun Tzu, lend these binary views a little tone, dress up the winners and losers, the Elect and the Preterite, the screwers and the screwed, each man in his station. "

Taoism

world

1996

Fry, Stephen. Making History. New York: Random House (1996); pg. 63.

"A blood and thunder general is bad enough, but one who prides himself on his knowledge of Taoism, French baroque music and the writings of Duns Scotus is your real menace to the world's good order. "

'I don't know. Some kind of conspiracy? One of the other runs, I used eleven letters, and I got something that could have been sect Egypt.' And it said 'lemonhead,' too. YOu think that could be just coincidence?' "

Taoism

world

2008

Barnes, John. Kaleidoscope Century. New York: Tor (1995); pg. 173.

"The other force in the mix was cybertao, the only religious movement that looked like it might challenge Ecucatholicism... it had spread rapidly among Western agnostics and atheists, and seemed to be absorbing... Buddhism and Taoism in the Far East. "

Taoism

world

2015

Leiber, Fritz. The Wanderer. New York: Walker & Co. (1964); pg. 45.

"The Wanderer continued to hang in the heavens, velvet soft yet sharply defined, incontrovertible, its maroon and golden markings raggedly approximating the ying-yang symbol of bright and dark, male and female, good and evil.

...the Little Man took a small notebook form his breast pocket and made a neat diagrammatic sketch on one of the unruled pages, smoothing the ragged boundary line on the new heavenly body and indicating the purple with a shading of parallel lines. " [Taoism isn't mentioned specifically in this book. But the 'Wanderer' planet is drawn frequently, with actual illustrations in the book, often looking just like the yin-yang symbol. The symbol also appears on the cover. Such a drawing appears on this page (45), also pg. 127.]

Taoism

world

2015

Leiber, Fritz. The Wanderer. New York: Walker & Co. (1964); pg. 280.

"A narrow black crescent cut off the rim of the purple half of its yin-yang face as... "

Taoism

world

2028

Barnes, John. Mother of Storms. New York: Tor (1994); pg. 33.

"The human race's great past cynics, everyone from Lao-tzu through Ben Jonson to Simone de Beauvoir, could have told them this would happen, but cynicism is a sensible, civilized view. "

Taoism

world

2032

Barnes, John. Kaleidoscope Century. New York: Tor (1995); pg. 184.

"'...Unless they can enlist the cybertaos to go in with them. And the cybertaos would just love that, because any idea that gets too close to cybertao ends up being cybertao, which is why the Jews and Muslims and Hindus have all gotten so paranoid about cybertao--because they've all lost millions of believers overnight. The poor... Buddhists and Taoists just disappeared entirely, you know?' "

"She came back to their flat one day to find him doing nothing, surrounded by books--many books: The Talmud, the Kama-Sutra, Bibles in several versions, the Book of the Dead, the Book of Mormon,... the Koran, the unabridged Golden Bough, the Way [Tao-Te-Ching], Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, sacred writings of a dozen other religions major and minor... "

Taoism

world

2100

Bear, Greg. Eon. New York: Bluejay (1985); pg. 270.

"'...Those with Chinese heritage make up at least a third of the Hexamon--far more than Americans... The Hexamon is the totality of human citizens. You might call it the state. The Nexus is the main lawmaking body of this city, and of the Way from the Thistledown and the forbidden territory to mark two ex nine. That is, the two-billion-kilometer point of the Way.' " ['The Way' may be named after the Taoist concept.]

"The Pope [said] 'We are, in a way, born again in Christ, but there are still too few of us--too few even if we include those other handfuls who are not of our faith, but still acknowledge God through the teachings of Luther or Laotse, Gautama Buddha or Joseph Smith. "

"Mr. Fang was close to eighty... He was from Zhendu in Sichuan... I had spent hours in his shop watching him work. From time to time we talked philosophy. He especially liked the ancient Daoists and Karl Marx. "

"I thought of Meiling: thin and intense, a person who had trouble with detachment. Nonaction was not for her. She had no interest in the ideas of Lao Zi or the Buddha... 'She has a point,' Eddie said. 'I know that nonintervention makes everything more difficult. And maybe it is a farce. Maybe there is no way we can avoid changing this planet...' " [Also pg. 450, 464.]

"There was a faithful reproduction of the Notre Dame Cathedral in the center of the cemetery. It was painstakingly labeled: Ye Wee Kirk O Th' Glen. From the mouth of one of the gargoyles in the tower, a syrupy voice roared: 'SEE THE DRAMA OF THE GODS PORTRAYED IN VIBRANT ROBOT-ACTION IN YE WEE KIRK O TH' GLEN. MOSES ON MT. SINAI, THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST, MOHAMMED AND THE MOUNTAIN, LAO TSE AND THE MOON, THE REVELATION OF MARY BAKER EDDY, THE ASCENSION OF OUR LORD BUDDHA, THE UNVEILING OF THE TRUE AND ONLY GOD GALAXY . . .' Pause, and then a little more matter-of-factly: 'OWING TO THE SACRED NATURE OF THIS EXHIBIT, ADMISSION IS BY TICKET ONLY. TICKETS MAY BE PURCHASED FROM THE BAILIFF.' "

"Inside the box were twenty cards from a tarot deck that had been painted in Marseilles in 1933. Armentrout had paid a San Francisco bookseller four hundred thousand dollars for the cards in 1990. Twenty cards was less than a third of a complete tarot deck, and the powerful Death and The Tower cards were not among this partial set--but these twenty cards were from one of the fabulously rare Lombardy Zeroth decks, painted by a now-disbanded secret guild of damagingly initiated artists, and the images on the cards were almost intolerably evocative of the raw Jungian archetypes. " [Other refs. not in DB, e.g., pg. 60.]

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